Karen Henderson, Centretown News
Karyn Carty Ostafichuk, manager of planning for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, speaks to parents about the overcrowding issue at Elgin Street Public School.Critics of the proposal to address a chronic lack of space at the Elgin Street Public School say the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is opting for a short-sighted remedy.
“Our chief concern is that we don’t think this proposal offers a long-term solution,” says Catherine Pacella of the Elgin Street Parent Council.
“And we’re also concerned with the fact that it has been dealt with through a very short consultation process . We only found out in November,” she says.
Unexpected increases in student enrolments over the last two years have been putting considerable pressure on school resources, according to information presented by the Ottawa-Carleton District Public School Board at a public consultation on Jan. 6.
The projected number of students in 2016 is 369, raising enrolments to 145 per cent of the school’s capacity.
The board says the school doesn’t have enough classroom space for this many students. If the proposal is approved by board trustees on Feb. 23, it plans to relocate the English program to the Centennial Public School in September, while keeping the French immersion program at Elgin Street Public School.
Adjustments to the French program attendance boundaries will reduce student numbers coming from Old Ottawa East. The board says this will trim the school population to 290 students and “provide area students with localized access to strong and viable programs.”
Pacella doesn’t agree with the board’s proposal..
“The proposal will bring down the population a little bit, but we’d still be over-capacity,” says Pacella.
“We’re still going to be taking in a large number of junior kindergarten students and that’s going to keep driving up our numbers.”
While Pacella acknowledges that some parents are in favour of the board’s recommendations, she says the majority support a more comprehensive review process.
“An accommodation review has more stakeholders at the table, and can take anywhere from one to two years from start to finish,” says Pacella. “The idea being that we’d have more time, more resources and we could better plan longer-term for a broader area.”
Rafal Rohozinzki is a parent with two children at Elgin Street Public School. He says there are other reasons for rejecting the proposal.
“It will reduce the diversity in the existing school and effectively bring two schools in the same catchment area up to 100 per cent capacity, without really looking at what happens next,” says Rohozinzki.
“What happens next is a demographic boom in Centretown.”
He adds that parent councils in the area are partially to blame.
“The councils haven’t really played as strong a role as they should have,” he says.
He says Elgin Street Parent Council effectively allowed the school board to take the “convenient route” through a quick public consultation, rather than a more comprehensive accommodation review.
“There just hasn’t been the political pressure on [the school board] to do something.”
For this reason, Rohozinzki says he set up the Centretown School ‘Centretown Kids’ website and has been working independently with a group of other concerned parents in response to the proposed changes.
In an email, school board spokesperson Karyn Carty Ostafichuk responded to the criticisms of the proposal.
“It is essential that we address the enrolment pressures at Elgin for next September and accordingly action needs to be taken within the timelines identified,” she writes.
Ostafichuk says the board came up with the current proposal because it felt that it offered the most stability. However, she says it will be carefully considering all the feedback from the public consultation meeting on Jan. 20 before recommendations and decisions are made.
According to Rohozinzki, Centretown has traditionally been a diverse community, but not one where the issues of children and schooling have really been at the forefront of planning decisions. He says he feels some of that diversity will be lost if the school only offers a French immersion program.
“It’s really a question of getting the voices heard, making sure the school board and the trustees recognize that Centretown needs long-term solutions,” he says.
“It’s going to be an increasingly active, diverse and organized group of parents in Centretown that is going to be taking this on.”